Wikipedia’s Lightweight Model and Cost Effective Scalability May 13, 2011

‘Doing less with more’ is something we could all learn to do in many aspects of our lives, but Tim O’Reilly has built it in as one of the main principles of Web 2.0 lightweight models and cost-effective scalability!  Tim O’ Reilly states that “scalability in web 2.0 applies to business models as well as technology. Changes in cost, re-usability, process, and strategy mean much more can be done for less. Therefore, adopt a scalable, cost-effective strategy encompassing business models, development models, and technology to deliver products to market faster and cheaper without sacrificing future growth”. You have to keep your eye on the prize you know – start small, think BIG!

Image via CrunchBase

Some of the best practices for this web 2.0 principle include:

• ~Scale with demand driven by the network effect
• ~Outsource whenever practical and possible – rarely should you handle all your IT elements in house
• ~On the flip side of outsource, provide outsource infrastructure, function and expertise – capitalize on external opportunities
• ~Scale your pricing and revenue models – Don’t take a ‘one size fits all’ approach! Incorporate a multitude of revenue streams!

An example of a company that has done just this is Wikipedia! Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales as an offshoot of Nupedia, a now-abandoned project to produce a free encyclopedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is offered for free and for the most part is written by internet authors who write without pay (sound familiar? Remember harnessing the collective intelligence ?).

Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, available in more than 270 languages and attracting nearly 78 million visitors monthly as of January 2010. There are currently (as of today) 3,637,436 articles in the English Wikipedia.  Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization  that also hosts a number of other projects such as Commons, a free media repository, Wikiversity, a free learning materials and activities and Wikiquote,
a collection of quotations.

The Technical Side:

Wikipedia has obviously seen exponential growth (some would say viral growth) over the years as shown in the graph to the right.  Wikipedia uses MediaWiki software, the open-source program used not only on Wikimedia projects but also on many other third-party websites. The hardware supporting the Wikimedia projects is based on several hundred servers in various hosting centers around the world. Wikimedia uses geographical DNS to distribute requests between their two main sites (US and Europe) depending on the location of the client.

In November 2008, Wikimedia announced that it would partner with Sun Microsystems to help it build a secure and scalable open Web infrastructure. According to Oracle,Wikimedia has to deal with a number of challenges such as creating an easily expandable server and storage architecture, delivering rich media content to global users, accommodating large media files up to 100 MB and scaling to service a growing number of users. Oracle assisted Wikimedia by supplementing “its existing Linux-based cluster systems with an affordable, high performance, scalable solution based on Sun Fire X4150 and Sun Fire X4250 servers. The servers run the Solaris 10 Operating System with the Solaris ZFS file system, and Sun’s MySQL database”.  This has allowed Wikimedia to simplify their management system, enable easy scaling of servers and storage systems, improved data integrity with reliable backup solutions as well as enabling larger upload file sizes.

Clearly Wikimedia is doing what they can to remain scalable, but is also thinking of future growth, as stated in the 2010 Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan Summary, Wikimedia realizes that they still do not have a technological, operational and financial infrastructure to commensurate with people’s reliance upon it. As reliance on Wikimedia grows, the technical infrastructure must also grow…

The Revenue Model:

Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. The foundation is dedicated to encouraging “the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge”. Wikipedia has promised that the site will not display advertisements of anytime. In Wiki’s article ‘Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia’, point #1 is “We’re not for sale” – Wikipedia wants to remain a non-commercial website and is supported by donations and grants.  Wikipedia has always kept it’s staff numbers low in an effort to keep overhead and costs down.   There is a small number of  paid staff  (I counted 66…) while everyone else is a volunteer, including members on the Board of Trustees. By Wikipedia offering a free service it has allowed low barriers of adoption and cost (FREE!) to user. Wikipedia might be the only example of a site that has broken the Web 2.0 misconception that ‘having no revenue model is a viable approach’. While I would not recommend this revenue model (or lack of) for any other web 2.0 application, it has worked well for Wikimedia due to planning from day one (this free encyclopedia didn’t happen by accident).

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little more about Wikipedia – The question is, did you know they were non-profit?? Have you even wondered about it or just taken access to Wikipedia for granted?  Imagine if one day Wikipedia could not afford to be online! GASP!!!! University students worldwide would mourn!

Related articles

• Web 2.0 and Enterprise E2.0 – in Plain English – Social Business Community Blog (aiim.org)
• WikiMedia UK Hires Full-Time Staff, Aims To Increase Content Quality On Wikipedia (thenextweb.com)
• Wikipedia’s Goal: 1 Billion Monthly Visitors by 2015 (readwriteweb.com)
• Wikipedia in Schools – WikiMedia UK AGM [Conference Presentation] (olliebray.typepad.com)

Travel 2.0 – Leveraging the Long Tail May 8, 2011

Leveraging the long tail is a retailing concept that focuses on targeting niche markets. This idea was introduced by Wired Magazine’s author Chris Anderson in 2004. Chris Anderson defined “The Long Tail” as a statistical curve showing the advantage that website based sellers with countless items available for niche markets have over store-front retailers with limited goods for mass markets. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers recognize that low volume products are not worth the shelf space due to warehousing, distribution, marketing and labour cost. Online retailers, in contrast, do not have to worry about saving precious shelf-space as there is no shelf space on the internet! Inventory holding no longer becomes an issue for online stores and these retailers have the cost advantage of lower inventory and sales costs. The costs of maintaining a physical store are removed, costs drastically reduce, and this allows online stores to target micro, or niche markets.

The vertical axis of this graph represents the mass market appeal of a product, while the horizontal axis represents a particular product. The ‘head’ of the graph depicts traditional markets, while the trailing tail represents the niche markets. This idea of leveraging the long tail instead of focusing on the mass market debunks the old 80/20 rule or Pareto principle.

Tim O’Reilly, in his description of “Web 2.0″, also defined ‘Leveraging the long tail’ as one of the core design patterns of these Web 2.0 Internet business models. O’Reilly describes it as, “the collective power of the small sites that make up the bulk of the web’s content.”

There are a variety of sites that are taking full advantage of the long tail, companies such as Etsy, Amazon, Audible, and Netflix. Let’s look at some specific examples of companies leveraging the long tail in the travel industry. Travel & Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, supporting more than 258 million jobs worldwide and generating some 9.1% of global GDP. Millions of travelers are looking for experiences beyond those offered by the larger online players such as Expedia.com and Travelocity.com – these sites traditionally sell ‘inventory’ such as a seat on an aircraft, a car rental, or a room in a hotel- these sites focus on popular vacation destinations. Travelers are now engaging with other travelers to communicate about different types of ‘experience’ travel such as Eco-travel, volunteer travel, ‘off the beaten track’ travel, sustainable tourism, gay and lesbian friendly travel, etc.

Websites such as Lonelyplanet.com have five million visitors to their site each month – visitors come to the website because it offers a unique way for travelers to plan their trips. Lonely Planet has detailed information on thousands of cities and countries available on their Destinations page. Thorn Tree offers a forum for exchanging travel advice and opinion with other travelers. The Comet provides newsletter, offers travel gossip and discounts for travelers. Lonely Planet’s Hotels & Hostels offers an innovative, online accommodation booking system with a huge amount of options. Finally, the Travel Services section offers flight bookings, insurance, travel accessories and basically anything else related to your travel needs.  What makes Lonely Planet’s travel services different is that you are not simply entering dates and looking for prices to the world’s top destinations- you choose the country you’d like to travel to, and then search for an activity that interest you. Activities include everything from charity challenges, mountaineering, photography trips, culinary travels, community project travel and camel riding!

Airbnb is another example of a company that is taking advantage of a niche market of travelers looking for a local, authentic and truly memorable experience. In October 2007, two broke software designers decided to blow up some air mattresses in their San Francisco apartment and offer ‘an air bed and breakfast’ over the internet. The website’s story states that there was a quick response from travelers demanding a place to stay where the “hospitality was genuine and the M&Ms didn’t cost $6”. Since then the company has grown to connect people in over 8.000 cities.  Locals rent out a room or their entire apartment or house at a fraction of the price of a hotel room in places like Chicago, Istanbul or Shanghai. You input the location, dates, room type and price range you want and a listing of options is presented including the interests of the person who is renting! Guests can build real connections with their hosts, gain access to distinctive spaces, and immerse themselves in the culture of their destinations.

Both Lonely Planet and Airbnb follow some of the best practices of ‘leveraging the long tail’ according to Web 2.0 principles:

More selection – both sites provide ‘mass market’ appeal, Lonely Planet offers books on top destination and Airbnb offers full house rental for family vacationers, or those who would like more privacy (they market beyond the hostel accommodation traveler)

Lower price – less overhead (no storefronts for either store)

Scalability –  Both sites can sell more ‘items’ by simply increasing the online ‘store’ – no extra shelving required! Both sites do not require any physical delivery or inventory to be held, they are simply selling a service or acting as an agent between two parties.

‘Wisdom of Crowds’ – both sides use this philosophy and encourage user contributions in the form of feedbacks, reviews, rankings and user ratings.

Algorithmic Data Management – Airbnb is a great example of a site that helps customer find similar products based on their ‘clicks’. If you click on a certain house, it will show you similar homes in the vicinity.Lonely Planet also does this by endorsing their products in a ‘You might like…’ window based on the area of the world you are showing interest in.

To wrap it up, these are only two small examples of companies that are taking (successfully) taking advantage of niche markets. There are still millions of untapped markets-  can you think of some?  Sramana Mitra makes a great point in her Forbes.com article where she commented,  “to think that most of the world – large parts of Asia, Africa, Latin America, China – are not yet on the Internet – is a sobering thought. Can you imagine how many more significant businesses are yet to be built as the next billion gets online?”

Life in Perpetual Beta April 21, 2011

Perpetual Beta is a term introduced in Web 2.0 to describe when the development stage after ‘software completion’ is intentionally extended (maybe for an undefined time). Developers then release continuous improvements and new features. This new pattern has changed the traditional software development cycle in a meaningful way. Traditionally we bought software, installed it, and ran it over and over again until we bought the next version, or an update was released. Since users are now connected to the internet, every time we click to a website we are ‘downloading’ new content. Think about it, when was the last time you walked into a shop and bought a disc to install?

This Web2.0 principle of Perpetual Beta introduces user participation in the development cycle. As discussed previously, the best sites harness collective, the better sites use that information to release mini updates, hence creating even better sites! Are you seeing how the Web 2.0 principles are adding up? Creating unique, hard to recreate data (more users = richer data) + innovation in assembly = a connection to, and an argument for perpetual beta!!

I like to think of perpetual beta as the way we live and learn. You learn new things daily, you know better, you start doing better (hopefully)… continual improvements. Wouldn’t it be weird if we stored up all our experiences and then released a new version of ourselves with all the lessons once a year Mindy 25.0, Mindy 26.0… that just wouldn’t make sense!

Perpetual beta is about ‘releasing early and releasing often‘. It’s the different I outlined above but in software terms. It’s buying Microsoft Office every few years when they create a new version, or using Google and Facebook – sites that update far more than you’d ever know. Check out the change log for Facebook and see if you’ve noticed all the changes that have happened on a weekly basis. Google Chrome, Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry stay in a state of constant beta, continually updating and tweaking their sites.

Web 2.0 has created a standard – users expect a service that is readily available, easy to use, and updated often if it isn’t working. Users don’t want to spend time downloading updates anymore (iTunes updates and app updates annoy me!). Users expect that the sites or services they use will take into account their needs, fix bugs, and have the site running the best possible version!  Users are generally aware that sites are collecting their data (sometimes they even ask if they can), but if the site has asked to collect data to increase/update the services available to you, then you’d expect that they’d increase/update the services available to you, otherwise what’s the point?

In March this year, an announcement was made that travel search engine Kayak launched a beta hotel booking service in a partnership with Travelocity, an online travel agency. Previously Kayak had re-directed users to third-party sites where they could book their hotels. Kayak will now offer users the ability to book hotels directly via a service site that has been launched in beta. Travelocity has had experience working in beta as they currently offer an ‘Experience Finder’  service that has been in beta since 2006. This experience builder site was built in full flash front end, Java back-end, and OpenAMF middle tier, it includes no hard coding and a convenient ‘back button’ to undo non-welcomed changes.

As with any site collecting users private data, Travelocity and Kayak have to deal with issues of privacy and security. Travelocity has not given users to option to opt out of sharing the information gathered on the site, however they have provided users with information (via a link in tiny font at the bottom of their page). This link provides users with information on what is collected, how information is used, how it’s shared as well as the safeguards they have in place to protect your personal information.

While it is too early to see how Kayak does with their beta hotel booking service, it’s fair to say living in a state of perpetual beta has worked for Travelocity’s ‘experience finder’ venture, as it has been in beta for over 5 years. I guess it’s true what Heraclitus said “Change is the only constant“.

Software Above the Level of a Single Device April 13, 2011

Image via CrunchBase

In the past, the internet was accessed through webpages – information was downloaded from the server to the user’s PC. Today, Web 2.0 has changed the way users interact with web-pages, and how web-pages interact with servers. In a principle outlined by Tim O’Reilly, “software about the level of a single service” was introduced as a realization that there is a web platform that can be utilized to its full potential to give benefits to users.

One application that characterizes this Web 2.0 principle is Microsoft’s LiveMesh 2011 platform (which runs on Mac’s as well). LiveMesh is a platform that allows PCs, hand-held devices, and mobile phones to run symmetrically. This allows users to run the internet as they require, and not rely on their home computer as the center for internet use.  This is perfectly exemplified by the quote from www.birrell.org where the writer quotes “If you ask me what computer I use, it’s the closest one. If you ask me where my data is stored, its in the web. Put more concretely, the system should never lock a user’s state into a computer that he might not later be able to access. If the user moves, that shouldn’t remove him from his data (and in general he can’t take all his data with him).”

The LiveMesh platform is connected through the use of FeedSync. FeedSync is an extension to earlier feed formats of RSS and Atom. These feed formats are ‘designed to enable the synchronization of information by using a variety of data sources’. With the popularity of mobile phones with internet connectivity such as iPhone, users are expecting to use the same applications they use on their home PC, on the road.

Windows LiveMesh works by allowing users to add their content, such as files and photos, to the ‘LiveMesh’ – which refers to all the devices (laptop, mobile phone, husbands mobile phone, etc. ) that are being synced with one another. When any content is uploaded to the ‘LiveMesh’, all the devices are synchronized (through the use of previously mentioned FeedSync).  Live Mesh also includes a cloud storage component called Live Desktop, an online storage service that allows synchronized folders to be accessible via a website. Who wouldn’t love this? No need to carry around a memory stick and update it daily!

LiveMesh isn’t the only web service that is taking advantage of the idea of  ‘software above the single level of service’. There are a variety of remote desktop services such as Apple MobileMe, as well as online storage, such as DropBox and Box.net. While I am not a user of MobileMe – I am a user of LiveMesh because its’ free, even if there is a restriction on the storage amount. I like free! You can try MobileMe free for 60-days only, then there is a charge.

The existence of MobileMe, LiveMesh, and DropBox (and the plethora of other internet storage, collaboration, file sharing) applications are made possible by the reduced cost of providing these services. Server costs are reduced, the number of mobile  users worldwide, many with internet connectivity, has increased worldwide. The majority of the world is connected, so now it’s not about the internet. Going back to the previous Web2.0 principle, it’s about Data, the focus is on the use of information and the way we use it.

I have been thinking about this Web 2.0 principle lately as I have been amazed at the innovations in Smart Homes. As a daughter of a builder, I was amazed to see what my dad has been up to lately, things that I thought impossible. Things that I watched on ‘The Jetsons’ and thought would be beyond my lifetime. Imagine this: You are leaving the office, and it’s cold out. So you turn to your mobile phone and brew a hot chocolate from your latte machine so it will be waiting for you. You turn on your heated floors, and turn up the heat. You get home, realize you forgot your house keys so you walk up to the front door and the facial recognition system recognizes you and opens the locks on the doors. Then it lights up your usual path that you take when you com home (it’s learned this from your usual activity) – and it can even play your music playlist in the house.  Forget imaging!! It’s here!!! WOW!!

Etsy Provides the Ultimate User Shopping Experience April 1, 2011

Rich user experience is an ever important principle in this ‘Web 2.0’ era as users expectations have increased (and attention spans shortened). No longer do users want to search through static web pages but they are expecting an engaging and dynamic experience.  Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) are where it’s at, sites are to be designed for we, the people!  However, user experience should not come at the cost of usability; nothing is more annoying than a flash site that doesn’t run on your iPad, a site that takes forever to load or a site that is so confusing you get lost on it!

There are a variety of tools, such as Adoble Flash and Ajax, that have been created to allow developers to create RIAs that allow users to have a rich, user-friendly experience. Let’s have a look at how one company does this extremely well.

Now, I don’t have to tell you I like shopping (see previous blog), but the one thing I like more than shopping is a wicked shopping site! Introducing my guilty pastime…Etsy! I’ve spent hours on this site, no joke.

Etsy is a fine example of a site that creates a rich user experience (previously by using Flash, but they are moving away from this). Etsy is a marketplace that has a vision for everyone to buy, sell and live handmade. Etsy enables people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers. Beyond that, Etsy has successfully created a community of like-minded users: artisans and artists, creators, collectors, and developers. Etsy APIs even let developers build their own Etsy-powered applications.

What I like about Etsy is that it offers a new online shopping experience. While this site might be compared to eBay, Etsy feels more like a personal shopping experience. Etsy has provided sellers with ‘stores’- allowing for a banner, an avatar, shop announcements and links to the store, and there is no auction bidding for items. The user interactions and collaborations such as discussion forums, the Etsy blog, virtual ‘workshops’,  as well as the interactivity with Twitter and Facebook are something that eBay does not offer.

I can browse the site like I might browse my favorite store. I don’t have to search through categories such as ‘pants’, ‘skirts’, ‘shorts’.I can choose the way I shop!

I can shop by my favorite colours (turquoise) – you MUST try this! You run your mouse around the screen and colour bubbles appear.I don’t know how it works, but it’s genius and blows me away every time, and who doesn’t love to channel their inner 5 year old?

I can shop by member created shopping galleries, or shop by trending tags (I can even just search by user-defined categories).

I can ‘pounce’  on items in two different ways: by shops that just had a sale, or by shops that are undiscovered and still waiting for their first sale.

I can choose to shop locally by entering my location into their ‘Geolocator‘.

I can just on a Time Machine and scroll through items that are just listed, about to end, or just sold!

And best yet, I can pick a friend on Facebook, Etsy will search their ‘Likes’ and suggest gifts!! Alternatively, you can just pick a type of friend, such as ‘Knight the Knitter‘ or ‘Tina the Tween’ for gift suggestions.

As you can see, this site goes beyond ‘buying and selling’ and creates an amazing experience by making it easy for users to find items, and helps sellers improve visibility.

. Is this site not genius? Best yet, you don’t have to become a member to start browsing, it’s an open marketplace for you to browse around. So step right in and kiss the next 2 hours goodbye!!

DIGG – Innovation in Assembly March 23, 2011

“The Web 2.0 mindset is good at re-use”.  This quote from O’Reilly who defines Web 2.0 provides insight into the principle of ‘Innovation in Assembly’. Last week we talked about creating value through data, this week it’s all about adding value by assembling different components in unique and useful ways. For example, by integrating two service providers that have similar users, you could build a community! Core to this is being able to provide Application programming interfaces, or APIs, as these serve an interface between different software programs and facilitates interaction. Let’s look at an example…

Digg is a social news website that promotes web content based on user ratings. The web application started out as an experiment in 2004 and the site progressed to include Google AdSense and friends lists.  This site continues to grow, and website traffic information from Alexa.com ranked the Digg website as 135th in terms of traffic on the internet, and Quantcast has estimated Digg’s U.S. unique visits at 8.5 million a month!!

Features:

Digg launched a feature that integrates with Facebook for users to share Digg articles on their Facebook page. This feature also allows Facebook users to log into Digg with their Facebook account, saving users the usually required Digg registration, therefore lowering the usual barriers to entry. Digg opened their API to the public allowing software developers to write tools and applications, and to allow developers to integrate Digg’s core functionality and data to their own app or website (functionality includes ‘digging’ activity, comments, ratings, etc). Developers were able to extend the functionality of Digg through the use of mash-ups (as Digg had designed for remixability).  Developers have a wealth of tools available  (through Digglite) to them from Digg, and they can even request to use the API to request very specific information about stories, imagines and videos submitted to Digg.  Application requests are submitted using REST.

Service:

Digg’s API is provided ‘as is’, allowing Digg to remove legal liability to support any failures.

To sum it all up:

Through innovation in assembly, Digg has been able to provide APIs to foster third-party innovation through an open platform that builds trust and a community. Digg has opened up their platform to make it easier to remix, I think this is what has allowed for such growth in the company, and as we learned a few weeks ago – the more users, the merrier!!

Pandora Radio- Using music data in new, exciting ways! March 19, 2011

One of the principles of Web 2.0 is that data is the next ‘Intel inside’.  O’ Reilly, who coined the term Web 2.0, explains it best in his quote “Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies, so much so that we have sometimes referred to these applications as ‘infoware’  rather than merely software”.  Basically, data is becoming the valuable asset beyond functionality, users are looking for sites that harvest and manage data in meaningful ways.

I have great examples of two companies that are doing just that, they are taking music and organizing it in a meaningful way that enriches the user experience by being able to listen to only the music you like – ignoring all the other stuff. It’s listening to a radio station that was made just you!!! You don’t have to spend hours searching for new music on the internet either, it will come to you!

The two examples of companies that are using data in a new meaningful way to meet this need of music lovers, like myself, are last.fm and Pandora Radio. Both last.fm and Pandora have created and used data to be their strategic asset to supports the music files, files that are readily available all over the internet and radio stations.

How are they able to do this? By looking at one of the principles of Web 2.0 as stated by Tim O’Reilly that “data is the next Intel inside” we can see that most Web2.0 applications are going beyond the traditional data-base driven websites and injecting unique, hard to recreate data .

O’Reilly emphasizes that the challenge here is to create the unique source of data.  It’s not even who OWNS the data, it’s who USES the data in a way that is different to the other. This is what makes Google maps, Flickr, Facebook and del.icio.us so valuable and useful to users.

Both Pandora and last.fm  have created their own music data (music groupings, characteristic, traits  etc.) but they both compliment that data with data built from a network (the users). Pandora employs musicians who have built an extensive musical taxonomy just for Pandora. Pandora Radio takes control of assigning characteristics to the music (Donaldson, 2009). Over 400 different musical attributes are considered when selecting the users next song. These 400 attributes are combined into larger groups called focus traits. There are 2,000 focus traits. Pandora likes to call it their “musicological “DNA”.   The database is then further enriched as more users submit their preferences and Pandora updates their database.

The user-generated content creates personalized recommendations for people based on the music they have previously listened to and given a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’. As a result, the data becomes better and more valuable as more users listen and rate the music.

Both of the sites also rely on music tracks- these tracks are easy to obtain (think iTunes), but it is the data that compliment these tracks (that they do not own) that makes these sites so special. Users can not only access music that is tailored to them, but they can also get updates if bands they like are coming to their area, bands biographies, selected discography, they can tweet, share and link to the music as well. Users also have the ability to buy the songs or albums as Pandora links to a number of  online retailers. Users can listen to the music for free, or create an account to  remember their preferences and their listening history.

(Please note: Previously Pandora had an international broadcast, but due to legal issues the free radio is now only available in the United States. Outside of the USA Pandora is able to recommend songs or artist based on the end users searches, which is a very valuable tool! ) Check this link to see it in action!

Further information if you’re interested:

CrunchBase

The Music Genome Project

ShopStyle Allows Users to Channel Their Inner Fashionista! March 13, 2011

There’s nothing I like more than shopping…

which led me to discover ShopStyle. Shop Style describes themselves as ‘the online equivalent of browsing the aisles of the world’s most fabulous store.’  My friends and I call it the Google of Fashion! I had never really thought of this website as anything more than an amazing and fun website until I had learned more about the principles of Web 2.0, and found this site as an amazing example of one that demonstrates a success in harnessing the collective intelligence of its users. Great examples of Web 2.0 sites are ones are designed to foster collaboration and sharing between users. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re collaborating (those are the best ones). Silly me, I always thought I was just shopping on an awesome website and creating looks for fun, but now I realize that ShopStyle was secretly putting me to work! Oh well, they know their shoppers well because they know I’ll be back at it tonight!

ShopStyle Website

It’s a search engine that is devoted to all things shopping! Instead of opening 1001 websites to browse their offerings, I can do it all from one site. And as if that wasn’t enough….the user participation is what makes this site my favorite.  Everyday  people around the world, like me, can channel their inner fashion designer/editor/fashionista and create Stylelook Books that they can share with other shoppers, put on their blogs, email to friends, FaceBook or Twitters it,  you can comment on other users looks, etc….  So as I said, not only is it the Google of Fashion, it’s becoming the new Fashion application must have for all fashion lovers worldwide!!

Now, I know there is no shortage of fashion sites online- so what makes this so appealing to users?  The USERS! Having the ability to create looks that you can tag allows other users to find the perfect outfit they are looking for.  Simply typing in “Date night, blue jeans, heels” and you find a look book that includes jeans and heels, along with accessories, and a handbag… someone else has created the perfect date night look for you.  The more users there are that contribute to the lookbooks, or tagging of the looks, the more rich MY shopping experience. If I want to shop for “turquoise platform gold wedding heels” then I might just find them!!

ShopStyle utilizes the power of tags just like the world’s largest social bookmarking web service, del.icio.us “Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms (generating a kind of folksonomy)” (Wikipedia, 2011). ShopStyle also groups merchandise using some traditional categories for those users who simply want to browse. Furthermore, the Style Filter lets you further filter your findings by sale, new arrivals, brand,  size, price, etc… You’re probably getting the picture here – It makes shopping easy, convenient and fun!! Best of all, the users are happy to do most of the work for free, due to their love of fashion and to express their creativity.

So, how am I able to shop for such detailed items and actually get a search result? A recent interview conducted by Guardian News (2011) with the founder of ShopStyle, Andy Moss,  reveals that there are “about 2 million monthly unique visitors” and the website has a very loyal following, with 75% of their shoppers visiting once a week or more. With a following like that you’d be crazy not to create a platform that allows your company to harness some of that collective fashion intelligence.

The appeal of Shop Style is that you don’t have to be a member to take advantage of the benefits the site has to offer. If you simply want to shop, you can do so without having to sign up to the website, you can fulfill your retail therapy needs (and then some!) easily as the site hasn’t lost sight (har har) of its main objective. ShopStyle has a very clear target audience and  maintain a clear purpose,, and it shows right on their website where they proudly display the demographics of their shopper (31 year old rich, educated women).

Shop Style is simply an online shopping website that uses collective intelligence to enrich a service to others with similar wants and interests.  Now if you excuse me, I just need to do a little more research on a  ‘gold buckle black leather clutch bag” that I think my wardrobe needs!

Welcome to my Blog! March 11, 2011

Thanks for stopping by!

There will be updates shortly so come back soon!